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After sending her mother a questioning glance and receiving a tentative nod, she took Keane’s hand. He drew her forward. “This lovely lass is Chimera. She’s slightly bigger than her sister, just as ye are bigger than yer sister.”

Eyes gleaming, Elana grinned at him and then at Cora. “What’s the other one’s name?”

“She’s Sphynx,” he said. “Let them smell ye.”

Elana remained perfectly still as Chimera and Sphynx nosed her. Then, to his astonishment, Chimera pressed her head into Elana’s belly and began purring. Loudly.

“She likes ye,” he whispered. While not unfriendly with people they knew, the over-sized cats generally avoided strangers.

“May I pet her, Yer Grace?” Elana whispered back. “Pleeeease?”

She extended the word into a plea, her blue eyes wide in earnest supplication.

Nodding, he slanted his head to watch Sphynx. She’d wandered to Cora and similarly sniffed the lass and then her mother. As if to outdo her sister, she lay upon her back. Belly and paws upward, and making little chirping noises, she invited the small girl to rub her belly.

With a delighted giggle, Cora was only too happy to oblige.

Soon throaty purrs echoed around them.

Cupping his nape, he chuckled. “Och, that’s a first.”

Keane glanced up and caught Marjorie regarding him, confusion shadowing her fine-boned features. Arching an eyebrow, he silently challenged.

What now?

The graceful curve of her rosy mouth softened into an astonished half-smile. “Why, you’re not a cold-hearted brute at all.”

Four hours later, Marjorie hummed and tapped her toes in time to the lively reel as she watched laughing couples, many sweating profusely, gaily sway, dip, and turn in time to the lilting music. For certain, the Highlanders relished dancing almost as much as their whisky.

She’d originally intended to eat with her daughters, tell them a story, then bathe and seek her bed early. After all, her purpose for attending was to show support for the Kennedys, and she needn’t join the others for dinner and the dancing afterward to do so.

Nor did she have any desire to witness couples flirting and engaging in courtship when she’d put all such notions from her mind. And rightly so. She had daughters to raise, and that—only that—should remain her focus.

Not her loneliness or the peculiar unrest that plagued her of late.

However, Cora and Elana had other plans after their supper and baths. Plans which included oversized, purring cats indolently splayed alongside them. Beside themselves with excitement, her daughters had pleaded for Sphynx and Chimera to sleep atop their beds.

Marjorie still wasn’t wholly comfortable with the large felines weighing as much as Cora lurking about her daughters. However, the cheery, plump-cheeked maid, Phemie, assigned to the nursery during the house party, assured her she’d watch the girls like hawks.

Phemie vowed the cats were so mild-mannered and tame that they didn’t even hunt mice.

Marjorie strongly doubted that assertion. Somewhat reluctantly, she’d kissed her daughters’ soft, sweet, soap-scented cheeks and, after prayers and a dutiful pat atop each loudly purring cat’s slightly rough head, bid the lasses a goodnight.

Much refreshed and finally warm after a lavender and rosemary-scented soak, she wore one of her favorite gowns. A satin and velvet fern-green creation trimmed with gold. With her hair piled high on her head except for a few long curls trailing over her left shoulder, she didn’t feel quite so out of place. The only jewelry she owned, simple emerald earrings and a matching pendant, completed her ensemble.

A glance out her bedchamber window revealed the snowfall had stopped and only three or four inches blanketed the ground. Unless it began again, she needn’t worry about being snowed in after all, and her host’s plans for the week would remain unthwarted by petulant weather.

Why that mattered to her, she couldn’t hazard a guess.

Well, that wasn’t particularly true. If Keane were otherwise engaged, she’d not have to bear his company.

Would that be so very bad?

Earlier today, she’d have adamantly said yes. But after his astonishing behavior when introducing his cats to her daughters, she’d reassessed Keane, Duke of Roxdale. Mayhap he truly wasn’t such a brute, and that tingle of pleasure she’d first experienced when she’d seen him at Killeaggian Tower flitted around her middle again.

Or was it her heart?

Such thoughts were nonsensical flimflam.